1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a promotion method for emphatic sales promotion of specific commodities by issuing points when such commodities are sold, and more particularly to a promotion method and a system which realize thoughtful promotion by adding a commodity code peculiar to each commodity to point information, and selectively adding the number of points of the point information of the specific commodities on the basis of the commodity code at a data center, thereby facilitating changing settings such as the number of point issued for each commodity, a promotion period and the like without the necessity for changing settings of target automatic vending machines all at once.
2. Description of the Related Art
For conventional promotion or the like of a particular commodity, a point is issued every time the pertinent commodity is purchased, and a purchaser of the commodity collects the points and redeems the points for a free gift or the like.
Such points are issued by various ways such as stamping or magnetically recording on a card owned by each purchaser, or affixing a seal or the like onto each commodity so that a purchaser collects such seals.
But, issuing the points in a form of affixing onto commodities is very troublesome for both sellers and purchasers in handling them.
A form which adds points to the card owned by each purchaser is hard to issue points by an automatic vending machine, and it is also hard to provide for nation-wide promotion sponsored by the manufacturer of the commodities.
And, all of the above types require the sponsor of the promotion lots of time and trouble to recover the points and totaling them.
To remedy such disadvantages, the inventor has proposed in Japanese Patent Application No. 11-280034 and Japanese Patent Application No. 2000-210217 a promotion method by which point information having points encrypted is shown to a commodity purchaser when a commodity is sold, the purchaser sends the shown point information to a center unit by a communication device such as a portable telephone or a personal computer, the center unit deciphers the point information and adds points, and a seller provides service according to the added points.
But, the aforesaid promotion method has a problem that the promotion of a particular commodity cannot be performed different from other commodities for a particular period only.
For example, when the promotion of a particular commodity is emphatically performed for a given period, thoughtful promotion, e.g., the number of points of the pertinent commodity is doubled for the given period, cannot be made.
In other words, the aforesaid conventional method must change the setting of points in each automatic vending machine in order to change the points of the commodity, and in order to promote the particular commodity for a limited period as described above, it is necessary to change the settings of all the automatic vending machines selling the pertinent commodity all at once.